Roca Investments sold 2.7% of Sinteza Oradea for 4.4 million lei

The private equity firm Roca Investments sold, through an accelerated private placement, 2.69% of the chemical company Sinteza Oradea, an issuer whose shares had a strong increase in the first month of the year, as shown in reports from the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

Roca had launched the offer for the entire 18% holding in Sinteza, namely 11.9 million shares, and managed to sell almost 1.78 million shares at the unit price of 2.5 lei, 21.88% below the reference in the "regular" market, for 4.44 million lei. Following the placement on February 13, Roca's holding in the chemical company decreased to 15.3%, or 10.1 million shares.

In the second half of November last year, Sinteza announced the construction of a battery factory in Oradea together with Lockheed Martin. The value of the factory, which will produce 30,000 tons of negative electrolyte per year, starting in the summer of 2026, amounts to 50 million euros, and will be the first European production unit of this type and the largest in the world, according to information from BVB.

"This move follows Sinteza's recent success in obtaining co-financing funds worth 25 million euros under the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) for the electrolyte that is used in the case of large-sized GridStar Flow batteries," Sinteza announced in a report dated November 21, 2024.

Following these announcements, the Oradea-based company's shares had a strong increase, from 0.3-0.4 lei in November last year, to a maximum of 9.95 lei at the end of January this year. Subsequently, Sinteza's shares began to fall sharply, trading on Friday, around noon, at the price of 3.14 lei.

For the first nine months of 2024, Sinteza reported operating losses of only 0.63 million lei, compared to 11.2 million lei in the first nine months of 2023, as a result of the massive decrease in income from continuing activities and a negative result of 2.4 million lei from the variation in inventories. The company reported a loss of five million lei from operating activities, to which was added a loss from financial activities, so that Sinteza recorded a net loss of 5.3 million lei in the period January-September 2024.

Sinteza Oradea will be included in the MSCI Frontier IMI and MSCI Romania IMI indices, which include Small Cap, Mid Cap and Large Cap companies, starting with March 1, according to an announcement by the Bucharest Stock Exchange last week.